“Artist's Assistant; Straight outta Rivendell” is the latest collaboration between Rafael De La Cruz and Quintessa Matranga. In the gallery you will find a fox playing the bongos. A persian rug. Two digital paintings and four 3D-printed supports for the paintings. There will be a customized curtain and six 8.5 x 11 inkjet prints. The lights will be dimmed and replaced with party disco DJ bar ball stage lights with LED E27 RGB rotating lamp light bulbs. There will also be a performance by the elusive and mysterious noise musician, “Dirt DeVil.”

You are invited to join us for a reception on the evening of February the 27th at City Limits in Oakland, California.

The artists would like to leave you with these words from the poet Paul Eluard (1895 - 1952). They first found this poem through the movie, Maps to the Stars (dir. David Cronenberg, 2014)

Liberty

On my school notebooks
On my desk and on the trees
On the sands of snow
I write your name

On the pages I have read
On all the white pages
Stone, blood, paper or ash
I write your name

On the images of gold
On the weapons of the warriors
On the crown of the king
I write your name

On the jungle and the desert
On the nest and on the brier
On the echo of my childhood
I write your name

On all my scarves of blue
On the moist sunlit swamps
On the living lake of moonlight
I write your name

On the fields, on the horizon
On the birds’ wings
And on the mill of shadows
I write your name

On each whiff of daybreak
On the sea, on the boats
On the demented mountaintop
I write your name

On the froth of the cloud
On the sweat of the storm
On the dense rain and the flat
I write your name

On the flickering figures
On the bells of colors
On the natural truth
I write your name

On the high paths
On the deployed routes
On the crowd-thronged square
I write your name

On the lamp which is lit
On the lamp which isn’t
On my reunited thoughts
I write your name

On a fruit cut in two
Of my mirror and my chamber
On my bed, an empty shell
I write your name

On my dog, greathearted and greedy
On his pricked-up ears
On his blundering paws
I write your name

On the latch of my door
On those familiar objects
On the torrents of a good fire
I write your name

On the harmony of the flesh
On the faces of my friends
On each outstretched hand
I write your name

On the window of surprises
On a pair of expectant lips
In a state far deeper than silence
I write your name

On my crumbled hiding-places
On my sunken lighthouses
On my walls and my ennui
I write your name

On abstraction without desire
On naked solitude
On the marches of death
I write your name

And for the want of a word
I renew my life
For I was born to know you
To name you

Liberty.

- by Paul Eluard

Quintessa Matranga (b.1989 New York) currently lives and works in San Francisco, CA.Her solo exhibitions include A Thread or a Line That Holds Things Together at Chin's Push, Los Angeles and Guten Morgen at Either Way LA, also in Los Angeles. Her book Drawings was published earlier this year by Publication Studio Oakland. Matranga has also curated the exhibitions at Mission Comics, San Francisco from 2013-2015. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2013.

Rafael De La Cruz (b.1989 San Francisco) currently lives and works in Berkeley, CA. Rafael has recently shown at the Oakland Art Museum and Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles. He received his BA in Film Theory from San Francisco State University in 2012.

Recent collaborative exhibitions with Matranga and De La Cruz have included Sleepyhead at Basement Show NY, New York and Rot Farm at 1038, San Francisco. Forthcoming exhibitions include a group exhibition at Gertrude Contemporary in Victoria, Australia titled Boulevarde, Box Lunch at Skylab in Columbus, Ohio and CoCo Confidential Reduex at Center for Style in Melbourne, Australia.

This Is Real Life
Featuring: Diedrick Brackens
Show Runs March 5 - April 23
Reception Friday March 6, 5-8pm

Frenetic textiles combine painting and sculpture, West African weaving and European tapestry, blunder and intention, domesticity and the wilderness of the imagination.

Diedrick Brackens conjures the spirit of a homemaker and a myth-maker. In his exhibition at Johansson Projects, “This is Real Life,” Brackens weaves colorful textiles that align domestic spaces with the infinite expanse of the imagination, though perhaps not quite immaculately. His category-jamming works rest on both wall and floor, with his weavings balancing the pictorial properties of painting and the textural elements of sculpture. Each woven thing evidences traces of European tapestry, West African weavings, and Southern quilting techniques, though through the course of its creation each work begins to speak its own language. Some of Bracken's colors in the weavings are derived from commonly found commercially dyed yarn while others, made from tea, wine, and bleach allude to gay vernacular, bodily fluids, cleansing and domesticity. Focusing on the intersection of blunder and intention, dye and stain, whole and broken, Brackens evokes a feeling but invites the viewer to fill in the blanks.

Diedrick Brackens earned his Masters of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts where he was the recipient of the Barclay Simpson Award. His work has been featured at the Berkeley Art Museum and the 3rd Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 2013, and he is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Oregon.

-

Johansson Projects is a contemporary art gallery that functions as a curatorial laboratory, creating exhibitions that pair established and internationally-recognized artists with up-and-coming locals. Its moss ceiling by Misako Inaoka and unique architecture allows for innovative exhibitions in a fully immersive viewing environment. With no show confined purely to gallery walls it prompts viewers to actively engage with artists who explore the mysteries embedded in modernity often using unorthodox materials and methods. Johansson Projects is a locus for curators, collectors, and artists to connect and engage in dialogue with the larger art community both regionally and nationally.

In the two-person exhibition Twice in a While, Cara Levine and Jess Wheelock each explore human limitations by creating endurance and effort-based scenarios. In some works these scenarios are performed by the artist, while in others, they are experienced by the viewer. The attempts to understand or master both banal and grand external forces are met with struggle and often failure - at times eliciting subtle moments of humor. Using perceptual trickery and sets of constraints, Levine and Wheelock reveal the interdependence between objects, ourselves, and the people around us.

Working across sculpture, photography, and video, Cara Levine explores the intersections of the physical, metaphysical, traumatic and illusionary. A personal history with chronic pain informs her perception of spatial experience and investment in the prosthetic. Her new video work, Re-Mothering: What is Love's Perspective? offers a visual metaphor for the dissociative, physical and mental paralysis experienced during a migraine - inescapable pain where daily tasks become daunting, and seemingly insurmountable. Levine’s longstanding practice of yoga and meditation underlies her understanding of the mind as a portal, and an upbringing in Los Angeles feeds her interests in special effects. Drawing on these influences, she combines these elements to create and distill illusions to their most essential parts - maintaining the initial marvel while exposing the trick.

Similarly, Jess Wheelock’s work creates illusory, fantastical moments by amplifying seemingly banal actions. Utilizing video, everyday objects, electronics, and programming/code, she creates interactive pieces wherein the viewer’s actions influence the outcomes of the work. Wheelock’s work presents situations, such as the controlled reversal of an avalanche in the work Pushing Back Avalanches that involve struggle, anxiety, and pressure that can be temporarily relieved with the help of a participant.

About the Artists
Cara Levine lives and works in Oakland CA. She received her MFA in sculpture from California College of the Arts in 2012 and currently teaches ceramics at Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland CA and is completing a Teaching Fellowship at CCA. She has shown her work at the Wattis Center for Contemporary Art in San Francisco, The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, and The Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv. Recently she was an artist-in-residence at Kala Institute for the Arts, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Vermont Studio Center, and Signal Fire Arts.

Jess Wheelock is a multimedia artist living and working in Oakland. She earned a Masters of Science in Visual Studies from MIT and attended a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2010. Her work often combines video, performance and sculpture.

About the Gallery
The Royal NoneSuch Gallery is an alternative art and event space located in the Temescal district of Oakland, California. We are dedicated to creating community around art-based experiences that are thought provoking and conceptually rigorous, while also being accessible and fun. Through a framework of monthly exhibitions and related programs, we strive to maintain a dynamic schedule in which the gallery is continuously reinvented to reflect the spirit and process of an artist, specific program series, or collaboration. The Royal NoneSuch Gallery is not motivated by commercial interests, but instead by working with other artists and creators to facilitate experimentation and social engagement through monthly exhibitions and events. We encourage artists to translate their studio practice, not only into a month long installation, but into a social context that allows the public to actively connect with the central concepts and ideas of the exhibition through opportunities for participation. We take active responsibility for being part of an emerging art scene in Oakland by encouraging an atmosphere of creative risk taking from artists and participation from the community, aiming always for public experiences that are inclusive, innovative, and educational. Visitors to Royal NoneSuch can expect to see, hear, learn, experiment, and participate.